Heinrich Friedrich Füger Heilbronn 1751 - 1818 Vienna

K. Wilczek, Füger, doctoral thesis, Vienna 1925, cat. no. 112;
F. Ottmann, Von Füger bis Klimt Die Malerei Des XIX.Jahrhunderts in Meisterwerken aus Wiener Privatbesitz, Vienna 1923, reproduced, plate II;
K. Wilczek, "Fügers Künstlerischer Entwicklungsgang," in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, vol. II, 1928, p. 330, reproduced fig. 359.

Füger made self-portraits throughout his career, and by the time that the present canvas was painted, he had already enjoyed a long and successful career, and was by far the most important artist in Vienna, his adoptive home.  His brand of neoclassicism, a reflection of the international movement centered around Rome, was warmly received by the Viennese, and he was named the head of the Akademie der Bildenden Künste.  Füger left the Akademie in 1806, taking up the directorship of the imperial picture gallery; this seems to have been due in part to his conflict with a younger generation of artists who were, in 1809, to form the Lukasbrüder group, inspired by the art of the Renaissance.

We are grateful to Dr. Robert Keil who based on a photograph dates the present painting to circa 1814/15; Füger's age is slightly more advanced than in another self-portrait by the artist which is dated 1807 in the collection of the Osterreichische Galerie.